Out of control copyright bots are making a mockery of the DMCA

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While First Lady Michelle Obama’s primetime speech Tuesday night got rave reviews, it apparently wasn’t as popular with the automatic copyright bots that flag infringing content.

Shortly after the live stream ended — which was hosted by YouTube — the videos were then blocked. Those trying to watch replays of Mrs. Obama’s speech saw the following message: “This video contains content from WMG, SME, Associated Press (AP), UMG, Dow Jones, New York Times Digital, The Harry Fox Agency (HFA), Warner Chappell, UMPG Publishing and EMI Music Publishing, one or more of whom have blocked it in your country on copyright grounds.”

YouTube’s move came as a surprise to both the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Obama campaign, who were unaware of the block and had a link to the live stream from their front pages with the message clearly visible. YouTube chalked the gaffe up to a “technical error,” but failed to explain why Mrs. Obama’s convention speech is still marked as private.

Was there really a copyright claim on the First Lady’s speech, or was this yet another case of the copyright algorithms used by content providers getting a bit overzealous? This is the third time now in the past month that a major event has been disrupted due to some kind of copyright issue.

Twice in a week

Those watching the Hugo Awards via Ustream on Sunday night also found themselves cut off after copyright bots reacted to a clip of the popular science-fiction series Doctor Who. The message “Worldcon banned due to copyright infringment” appeared, and created a firestorm of negative comments against Ustream across social media.

Ustream’s system requires that broadcasters inform the site of the use of copyrighted content and if they have the permission to use it. Once that information is provided, the broadcast is “whitelisted.” Worldcon — the event where the awards ceremony is held — apparently never followed that practice.

The gaffe caused Ustream to rethink its copyright protection strategy.

“I have suspended use of this third-party system until we are able to recalibrate the settings so that we can better balance the needs of broadcasters, viewers, and copyright holders,” CEO and founder Brad Hunstable writes in a blog post. “While we are committed to protecting copyright, we absolutely must ensure our amazing and democratizing platform allows legal broadcasters to Ustream their events and shows.”

These events follow another takedown, which briefly booted the NASA Mars Rover Curiosity landing video offline in early August. The news organization that flagged it — Scripps Local News — has also “mistakenly” demanded the takedown of other NASA videos in the past, all of which should be in the public domain.

This is happening way too often

NASA says this happens all the time, which is sad. “Everything from imagery to music gets flagged,” Bob Jacobs, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for communications, told the Register last month. “We’ve been working with YouTube in a an effort to stop the automatic disabling of videos. So far, it hasn’t helped much.”

So what can be done? The obvious solution is to lessen dependence on automated systems. The Digital Millenium Copyright Act compels content providers to respond promptly to takedown requests. In the interest of saving time and money, companies have increased their dependence on copyright-sniffing bots.

But as we’re now seeing, these automated systems are beginning to run amok. It’s time to rethink copyright protections. There needs to be a system where select accounts who are known to have a legitimate purpose and/or most likely the permissions to run copyrighted content can do so without needing to worry about these bots disrupting their content.

Without a system in place to protect legitimate use of copyrighted material, both the content producer and the copyright holder will be hurt. People already see the overzealous actions of the entertainment industry when it comes to copyright as ridiculous: incidents like this are only going to make that problem worse.

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Copyright bots making a mockery? You mean DMCA is making a mockery of itself. It’s always been a bloated and stupid act, outdated since the start.
The bots are just a reflection, an attempt by programmers to cope with the bizarre idiocracy that DMCA caused.

lel ez rekt

Agreed, DMCA creates problems for all kinds of legit users due to bots who don’t have the intelligence to uphold the second part of the law (un-blocking legit sites).

warcaster

We don’t need a new law just for that, we just need Google to get its act together and make the system much better or completely eliminate it. They’ve given way too much power to the copyright holders in this.

Neo Cool`

or this could be the AI taking control and making decisions that will put them in control in few years. Skynet!

my thoughts exactly. There needs to be some balance in the force here…

Neoprimal

That’s pretty harsh. To that end, the consumer may lose because a bunch of services will probably just shut down. The damned if you do, damned if you don’t scenario is not a nice one to play to.

It may simply be time to put some red tape in. Require the companies wanting the take down to actually flag the content directly and then have a bot respond within a certain time period to take the video down, with a human being checking at some point to verify. It’s either that or go back to the drawing board to punch out better code.

Punishing them for not taking it down in time as well as mistakenly taking it down is just rough.

Michael Clapp

I think you may have misunderstood. I believe the person or company asking for the copyright takedown needs to have some skin in the game. Otherwise there is no real penalty to screaming “MINE” like a toddler whether it’s infringing or not. The services are impacted more by illegitimate takedown requests.

JDRahman

Why don’t these bots catch and block the thousands of Indian movies infesting youtube and other sites. You can’t watch a trailer nowadays without getting recommendations to 4 hour hindi flicks.

There was an interview at youtube headquarters with comedian Aziz Ansari. You can watch the clip from it on youtube, but at the interview/meet thing they asked him if he had a youtube account. He said that he did not anymore, as his videos had been pulled and then his account banned for uploading copyright infringing clips… from his own comedy special lol. It is funny how these automated setups work sometimes, and I agree that they need to take a bit more into context or something, as they obviously have the recognition part of it down.

Jeff Jones

Maybe instead of banning the video first they should presume innocence first. Give a 30 day notice to the original poster and allow for an easy way to submit proof of copyright permission. Then if the notice is ignored or no evidence is provided remove the video and put the account on a weekly notice status. Two or three weekly strikes and you move to instant strikes.

And of course if you clear all of your posted videos your account returns to the monthly notice time frame. That would at least keep things like the White House and NASA videos from being taken down without good reason.

As suggested by others, the ‘bots’ aren’t the problem, they’re just a symptom of a larger one: copyright is broken. Existing laws have been far outpaced by the world moving on, and the ones that *have* been updated are heavily tilted in favor of the corporations making more money, rather than fairness to everyone.

J. Andrew Lanz-O’Brien

I kinda hope YouTube et. al. are doing this on purpose. By pissing off enough common, oblivious voters, the public may start to react en mass to the insanity that is copyright law. Maybe then, we’ll see real change. To all the nay sayers, take on for the team and hope enough people pissed off, and help spread the rage. Just make sure it’s directed at the media companies and copyright instead of YouTube if you want to see any positive change.

David Salmon

There is presently no way that a person wanting to be law-abiding can determine whether an image is copyrighted and by whom. Every two-bit website around slaps its own copyright claim when it republishes the image. Until image recognition software advances to the point that a copyright database can be established, fair use must necessarily be extremely broad, pending an actual demonstration of a real claim to copyright.

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